


Vermeer or Van Gogh

by wishforwishes



Category: Harry Styles (Musician)
Genre: Baking, COVID-19, Earrings, Eavesdropping, Fluff, Gender Dysphoria (implied), Met Gala, Mild Blood, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, Multi, POV Multiple, Picnics, Polyamory, quarantine antics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24152908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishforwishes/pseuds/wishforwishes
Summary: Harry, Glenne, and the Azoffs' adventures in quarantine. Each chapter is loosely inspired by different works of art by Johannes Vermeer or Vincent Van Gogh.
Relationships: Jeff Azoff/Glenne Christiaansen, Jeff Azoff/Harry Styles
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26
Collections: Accessory Fest 2020





	1. girl with a pearl earring

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! I hope you enjoy this little fic. The prompt was, obviously, "Harry's pearl earring". The original author dropped out, so I decided to pinch-hit for it, as I consider this famous Harry look to be emblematic of Accessory Fest (it's the blog's icon, after all!). 
> 
> Anyway, I was inspired by my own, currently messed up ears that I can't leave my house to go see a doctor about. Happy two(ish) months of quarantine, everyone!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boy with the pearl earring 2.0 — this time with 100% less pearl and 50% less earlobe.

Jeff’s just settling down in the den for a lazy evening when he hears a high-pitched scream from the other side of the house. He vaults over the couch and takes off running without thinking about it; as a terminally anxious person, he doesn't want to give his brain time to melt down over the various and sundry reasons for the scream. 

But even if he had, he doesn’t think he’d have managed to imagine what he actually sees when he bursts through the door: his girlfriend holding a sewing needle in one hand and a zippo lighter in the other, both in a white-knuckled grip as she apologizes profusely to his boyfriend, who’s moaning and flopping about on the ground, his own hands covering a sluggishly bleeding wound. 

Jeff takes in the carnage for a moment. Then he rolls his eyes. 

“Okay, who let Harry back on twitter?” 

***

The Met Gala wasn’t being held this year. This was just one of a seemingly infinite number of events that had to be cancelled because of the pandemic, and one to which Harry applied his zen mantra of ‘it’s a mild inconvenience, so many people are dealing with much worse’. 

Jeff wasn’t fooled. He knew that every reminder about how the world was on pause bothered him, and the Met was going to be one of the worst culprits. Since no one had this year’s Gala to talk about, the whole internet instead went into reminiscence overload about last year’s camp theme, and Harry’s fans, god love them, were plastering all of his ‘looks’ from the night everywhere they could. 

It would have been a recipe for a nostalgia spiral under most circumstances. But under the present ones — Harry being forced to hole up with only Glenne and the Azoffs for company, all of his carefully laid plans and wardrobe choices for the year on pause indefinitely — it was more likely to be a depression spiral. 

So Jeff had lightly suggested ( _not_ ordered like a humorless matron, as Harry accused him of being) that Harry avoid the internet for the whole first week of May, to avoid going down that path. Apparently, Glenne had enabled him to break that rule (uh, that is, _ignore_ that _suggestion_ ) and look over the throwback posts Gucci was making for Harry’s now-famous pearl earring from last year. Which in turn led to them getting drunk and thinking it would be a fantastic idea to re-pierce Harry’s ear. 

***

The whole sad story comes out in the kitchen, while Jeff holds an ice pack to Harry’s swollen ear — considering it was already subjected to an at-home piercing, a year ago today, it’s no surprise that it gave up the ghost upon facing the trauma a second time. 

Glenne’s vanished, either to hide from Jeff’s wrath or to keep the rest of his family away while he and Harry talk. It’s probably the second one. His wrath only extends to disappointed exhales and sad puppy faces when it comes to Glenne. And when it comes to Harry, unfortunately, which is why both of Jeff’s partners keep getting away with shit like this.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says miserably. “I just miss — I miss being _pretty._ ”

Jeff would say that’s a little overwrought, but he knows there’s a lot about how Harry likes to express himself that Jeff can’t understand. What he does understand is that Harry likes to, well, actually express that expression. He likes to show himself off whenever he feels good about what he’s wearing.

“You’re pretty every day, H,” Jeff tries, which rouses Harry enough that he slaps Jeff’s hand away from him, sending the ice pack skittering across the table. Okay then.

“No, I’m not!” Harry’s face is pinched with distress and there’s some dried blood stuck in his beard.

“I haven’t so much as held a razor in almost two months, my stylists are across the bloody Atlantic with all my nice clothes, and now I’ve fucking deformed myself.” His voice shoots up a half-octave with every word, until he’s practically shrieking. He gestures to his wound wildly. 

“Be honest, Jeffrey. The bottom half of my ear is gone, isn’t it?” 

Jeff manages not to voice his first thought — that Harry’s earlobes were already nonexistent — unknowingly saving his own life in the process. 

Instead, he raises his hands and steps forward cautiously. When Harry doesn’t grab the ice pack and lob it at Jeff’s head, he takes that as a sign it’s safe to move in for a hug. 

“You know, my mom actually worked as a piercer at a mall when she was younger,” Jeff says, once Harry has unclenched his posture and started hugging back. 

“She’d probably know some safe ways for you to do it, once your ear has healed back up. And if you still want to re-pierce it. Plus, Michele can send you your earrings from the Gala in the mail, you know he’ll do anything if you ask him for it.”

Harry sighs, cuddling into Jeff’s neck; their beards bristle against each other, and he can feel Harry wince and pull back. Hmm. It seems like Jeff just found the real culprit for this drama, and it’s not a pearl earring. 

“Or maybe you could join me and Glenne for the self-care thing we’re doing tonight? She has this new organic shaving gel she wants to try out. I think it has oatmeal or some other hippie ingredients in it.”

Harry laughs, scraping his hand against his facial hair ruefully. 

“Is it that obvious?”

Jeff assumes that was a rhetorical question and waits for Harry to keep talking (unknowingly saving his life yet again). 

“Every guy I know is growing a quarantine beard, so I thought it made sense for me to do it too. I don’t know. I guess — I guess sometimes I think I’m just not trying hard enough? And maybe if I put in the effort to do something manly, like growing a beard, I’d finally feel — I don’t know.”

Jeff could fill in a lot of blanks in Harry’s stilted speech, but he’s not going to. He knows Harry will fill them in himself, in time. In the meantime, he needs to find Glenne, and some razors. 

And also to secretly reset the wifi password. 


	2. woman cutting bread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sour Broz vs Lady Cavendish: a bitter rivalry, to be sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I found myself returning to this verse when writing a commission recently, and before I knew it I had an idea for a multi-chaptered fic! I hope you all enjoy this next instalment: current plans are for 6-8 chapters, but we'll see what happens :)

By mid-May, the whole house smells like a bakery. The kitchen, of course, is the epicenter, where the yeasty scent of Jeff and Cam's sourdough starter has taken up residence. Jeff himself is a permanent fixture there too, obsessed with feeding the starter and kneading batches upon batches of dough.

Glenne's sick of it. She understands that they all need their hobbies at a time like this — even a house as big as the Azoff residence feels stifling after more than two months of quarantine. But Jeff's single minded focus, so useful when it comes to managing talent, is just plain annoying when applied to growing his and his brother's 'Sour Broz' business.

So Glenne's understandably annoyed. She's _not_ jealous of bread. That would be ridiculous. A person who would admit to that is a person with no dignity.

"I guess I just feel really jealous," Harry tells her. They've been banished from the kitchen for 'distracting' Jeff for the third time this week, and are currently sulking in the guest room Harry's claimed as his own since being stranded in LA. 

Harry had claimed to be unbothered, because now they had some free time to do their nails. He even cheerily picked out a robin's egg blue shade for them both to try, clucking in posh mock-disapproval when she called it nail polish instead of varnish. But since actually starting their manicures, Harry's mood (no pun intended) soured, until he was painting his nails in silence, a storm cloud gathering power over his head.

And now, this confession. Glenne stops painting her nails for a moment, just so she can concentrate on giving Harry as judgmental a look as possible. Better that than admitting weakness and saying she's jealous too. He pouts back at her, although the effect is ruined by the fact he's blowing on his nails at the same time. 

"Really," he says. "I used to work in a bakery, you know. I should be part of the bread-making process." 

Glenne doesn't know if Harry really is more jealous of the fact that he isn't getting a chance to feed the starter too, or if like her he's unwilling to admit he's feeling neglected. Either way, she should tell him to drop it and go back to his nails, before he forgets to apply a second coat and ends up with a half-finished manicure.

Instead, what she says is this: "Well, if you have more experience with baking than Jeff and Cam, you could always try to one-up them."

Harry's private storm cloud disperses, his whole demeanor turning sunny and more than a bit mischievous. 

"Glenne," he says, his tone delighted enough that she's already regretting her suggestion, "that is a fabulous idea."

A week later, she's caught up in the middle of an all-out war. Harry decides that if sourdough bread is going to be Jeff's new priority, banana bread is now _his_ domain. Every single day, he has a new variation for her to sample — chocolate peanut butter, cinnamon raisin, whole wheat and maple — and it quickly goes from a welcome alternative to Jeff's sourdough loaves to an annoyance in its own right. 

All the kitchen counter space is taken up now — not only by the all-important starter and however many bowls of dough are rising at the moment, but by bunches and bunches of bananas, stuffed into brown paper sacks alongside apples to make them ripen faster. 

Despite the mouthwatering array of scents mingling in the air, the atmosphere in the Azoff household has gone frosty.

"There's nothing _special_ about banana bread," Jeff says through gritted teeth while he and Glenne are getting ready for bed. "You don't have to use yeast, you don't even have to wait for the dough to rise. It's the most basic dessert bread there is. No skill involved." 

Glenne sighs. 

"Is this about the fact that Kendall ordered a loaf of Harry's bread this week instead of yours?"

"She's a multi-millionaire," he bursts out, his anger somewhat dampened by the fact he's currently buttoning up a plaid pajama shirt. And also by the fact that he's discussing goddamn _bread_. "Surely she doesn't have to choose between ordering from the Sour Broz and Harry's stupid new brand." 

Glenne privately thinks that Lady Cavendish is a clever name for a banana bread start-up, but she doesn't want to throw any more fuel on the fire. 

"Well, I'm surprised she even eats bread at all, to be honest. Maybe Harry's making her some special low-carb variety." 

More likely, Harry asked Kendall to help him blackball Jeff, but that's yet another thing Glenne isn't going to say out loud. 

Some of her thoughts must show on her face, though, because Jeff's even more huffy once they finally crawl into bed.

"I know you think I'm being ridiculous," he says (sounding pretty petulant, Glenne thinks uncharitably).

But then she sighs and relents. After all, what Jeff's feeling right now is only what she's been feeling the past few weeks. They're all being irrationally jealous for various reasons instead of just talking with each other. 

"I don't think you're being ridiculous. I've just been a little lonely lately, that's all." She wishes she'd let go of her pride enough to admit to it earlier: as soon as she does, Jeff instantly becomes contrite, rolling over to her side of the bed to embrace her. 

"I'm sorry. It's not like I don't realize I'm too obsessed. I've definitely never cared that much about baking before. I guess it's just nice to feel like I have a purpose and a job again."

"I understand that, babe. I'd just like to feel included in that. Harry would too," she adds pointedly, and Jeff groans and burrows his head into her shoulder.

"Of course all the banana bread wasn't just bread. God, I've been a terrible boyfriend to both of you lately, haven't I?" His voice is muffled but it still sounds genuinely guilty, and that just won't do.

"Hey, it's okay. We've all had our fair share of meltdowns since we've gotten trapped here," she says, willing to be magnanimous (in the hopes that he won't bring up the Piercing Incident as an example of one of those meltdowns).

"Still. I'll talk to him tomorrow," Jeff promises. 

She kisses him on the head gratefully, and the two of them fall asleep like that, wrapped up in each other's arms. 

When Glenne wakes, she's alone in the bed. But this time the rising smell of fresh bread makes her smile, because it's accompanied by the happy sound of giggling and chattering. When she makes her way downstairs and into the kitchen, she sees the two most important men in her life baking together peacefully — Jeff kneading dough and smiling fondly at Harry, who's cutting a steaming loaf of sourdough into slices and dressing each one with butter and caramelized bananas. 

As one, they turn to her when she steps fully into the room. Harry holds up a spoon in her direction. 

"Wanna help me finish making breakfast?" 

Yes, Glenne thinks. She definitely does.


	3. two women in a wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stable triad starts to wobble.

Glenne and Harry decide to go on a hike, to give all the things they're not saying some room to breathe. 

It'll be Harry's last trek out to the Elysian Hiking Trail for the foreseeable future; he's decided to head home to the UK before the new quarantine laws kick in, and he has no idea when he'll be back in LA. It's looking more and more likely that whenever he  _ does _ come back, everything will have changed. 

But that's one of the subjects he and Glenne are avoiding. The main one, really. So instead he focuses on the burn in his thighs and his shortness of breath as they make their way up yet another incline — Glenne had insisted on having a picnic at a favorite overlook, and Harry had said yes, not remembering that he hasn't been to the gym since everything shut down.

She's not faring much better, at least — dark splotches of sweat are blooming onto the underarms and upper back of the thin grey tee she's wearing, and any attempts at conversation have turned bitten off and strained. 

The ground levels out eventually, to a small but open area sandwiched between the woods and the edge of a cliff, where they can see all the way to downtown LA in the distance on a good day. 

It's not a good day. It's overcast and the clouds (and smog, even out here in the wilderness) mostly conceal the buildings pin-pricking the horizon. 

But the patterned quilt Glenne spreads out for them shines like a jewel even in the dull light, and the weather's not poor enough to herald rain and threaten the bounty they start laying down on it. 

In preparation that morning, they nicked a couple sourdough loaves from the kitchen, which was stocked with a bakery's worth of bread — so Jeff's whining about stealing was really unnecessary — and packed up some camembert, strawberry jam, and fist-sized sample bottles of cheap wine into a small cooler. 

Once their carb-heavy feast is laid out and they've exhausted their small talk about how out of shape they are, and how delicious the food is and even (the subject of desperately awkward people) how shit the weather is today, there's nothing left but all the those things they don't want to say. 

Harry doesn't want his leaving to turn into a dramatic production. He'd honestly be going back to England regardless; obviously the fucking pandemic factors more into his travel decisions than him being the last person in the Azoff household to know that Glenne and Jeff are considering finally getting engaged. 

*** 

Harry was tuning his guitar in the study (the smaller, green one in the east wing)  _ specifically _ so he wouldn't be underfoot while Irving conducted business (which he normally did in either the larger, cream-and-plum study in the west wing or the larger, wood-panelled study in the east wing). So when he first heard the voices, he didn't realise he was accidentally eavesdropping on his boyfriend's father. 

He probably would have let the conversation wash over him without absorbing anything. But then the word 'wedding' filtered into his mind while he fiddled with a too-sharp fret, and suddenly he was hyper-focused. 

"—not exactly the best time for a wedding," Irving was saying to someone. Given the pause before he spoke again, he was clearly on a call. 

"No, I don't know for sure if he's popping the question soon, but they've been dating so long, and it's only gotten more serious between them since quarantine. I know he's thinking about it." 

Jeff? Thinking about proposing to Glenne, and he hadn't even  _ mentioned _ it to Harry? That couldn't be right. But when the two of them were getting into bed that night (Glenne graciously switched rooms with Harry whenever he wanted a proper spooning from his boyfriend), Harry mentioned the impression Irving seemed to be under, and sure enough Jeff got a squirmy look on his face. 

He picked at the sheets for a minute, like he was going to start applying all his best dough-kneading techniques to the bed instead of just getting into it. 

"Well. We've been together so long now, both our families are starting to ask me pointedly instead of just jokingly and so. Yeah. Glenne and I have been talking about it a bit. It's not —"

"I'm happy for you," Harry blurted out as fast as he could, beating out the clench of his jaw and the grind of his teeth before they could betray him. 

"It's  _ not _ ," Jeff continued, his tone growing firmer as he finally got into bed and pulled Harry back against him, "like we're conspiring to leave you in the dust or whatever slight you've got percolating right now." 

He rapped his knuckles on Harry's forehead. 

"What's going on up there, big head?"

Harry sighed, tangling their fingers together and bringing Jeff's hand down to his chest. 

"You don't need to baby me. I know you can't marry both of us. Glenne's family doesn't even know you're _not being faithful to her,_ " he said, affecting the likely tone Mrs. Christiaansen and all her fellow Church of Denmark congregation members would take if they learned about Glenne's arrangement. Jeff gamely attempted a laugh, but the sound was flat. They both knew that skirted the edges of all the reasons it didn't even need to be a conversation. If Jeff was marrying anyone, he was marrying Glenne. 

***

"What do you mean it doesn't even need to be a conversation!" Glenne says shrilly. 

Harry has just made the mistake of mentioning the last bit of his reminiscing out loud. All that cheese and bread is about to start sitting sour in his stomach, he can tell. 

"Look, Harry. What Jeff and I were actually talking about is how he's not sure he wants to get married at all, because of the major guilt complex he has about not being able to live out  _ Big Love _ and make you and me sister wives. He's convinced if he marries either of us the other will think they're less important."

"But you are more important to him," is not the tactful wording Harry was hoping for but it does make Glenne stop babbling nervously and gape at him like a goldfish. 

"Seriously, don't try to deny it, it's fine. You two are a unit, a real force to be reckoned with. I know I can get jealous sometimes—" Harry pauses and waits for her to make a joke about how much he's understating his prodigious pettiness. But she just looks at him sadly and doesn't say anything so he takes a breath and plows ahead. 

"I'd never seriously want to get in the way of what you two have. And Jeff and I can't ever be super open about our relationship regardless of who he's marrying so it's a moot point."

"It seems like you're the one who's decided a lot of things without consulting us," Glenne says, and she doesn't sound angry, but she still gets up and walks away .

She doesn't go far — just to the other side of the clearing — but she keeps her back to him as she says, "All the shit you just said about me being more important, more of a unit with him — that's all stuff I've thought before about you. That sometimes I'm just the sidepiece to your rock solid partnership."

"The professional part of that partnership is why we can't get married or go public — I'm one of Jeff's clients, he's my manager; it'd be more bad press to deal with than either of us want, and that's not even getting into the fact that he has been publicly dating  _ you _ . So either we tell the truth and deal with tons of invasive garbage for the rest of our lives, or we let people think Jeff was cheating on you with me and now we're back to bad press again, so —"

"But  _ you're _ the one who most wants a wedding," Glenne cries, whipping back around to face him.

Harry blinks, thrown, but lets her keep talking over him. If she's getting at what he thinks she is, that will be the perfect way to prove his point.

"You're acting like this is for sure something Jeff and I want and that you're fine not having it when you're the resident hopeless romantic of the three of

us."

She points her finger dramatically at him as she storms back over. 

"You're the one who's watched all the rom-coms, wedding-themed ones included, over and over. You're the one who would love to spend ages on showy floral centerpieces and the right color palette, and of course the perfect bridal —" Glenne's mouth clicks shut and she stops a couple feet in front of him, like an invisible wall just slammed up between then. 

Harry's smile feels brittle and it must look fake too, because Glenne winces at it. 

"The perfect bridal gown, right?" he finishes for her. Glenne looks down, a mortified expression on her face. And damn it, Harry started this conversation to try to keep her from feeling bad about anything, and he's only accomplished the opposite so far. 

He reaches his hand out, and after a moment, she takes it, letting him pull her back down onto their blanket

"You're right," he says gently, "I would want to wear a gown, not a tux, at my wedding. And I do want to marry Jeff. The man I love. But what I most want is to avoid people I don't even know asking questions I don't know the answers to yet, or may not ever know. And waiting on me to figure that out, or accept that I won't? It's not fair to Jeff, and it's not fair to you. You two are the ones able to have the full experience, and I swear, Glenne, I want that for you. I've just made a mess of bringing it up because I'm leaving soon, and I didn't expect to have to talk about it yet."

He can practically see Glenne grab at his last sentence like a lifeline, and she does literally grab his shoulders. 

"Look, here's the bottom line," she says, jostling him a little with every other word. "Regardless of any of this, Jeff and I aren't going to get engaged while you're in London. Or in Italy, or any of the other places you might end up going before the fall. He knows I'd punch him in the balls if he asked me without you here for it." 

She pulls him in for a very aggressive hug. Harry notices when he tucks his head over her shoulder that she's accidentally stood in the half-empty container of jam and now her hiking boots are splashed a bloody red. He hugs her back, but he also says nothing about her shoes. 


End file.
